Girl’s undue jailing exemplifies plight of foster youth in custody

The mother of a girl, who lived at Mary Graham Children’s Shelter and was jailed on property crime charges, sits in her home.

The mother of a girl, who lived at Mary Graham Children’s Shelter and was jailed on property crime charges, sits in her home.

Photo: Jessica Christian, The Chronicle

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A San Joaquin County Sheriff's deputy walks back to his car after responding to a call to Mary Graham Children's Shelter April 6, 2017 in French Camp, Calif. A new bill would limit arrests at foster children's shelters in California. less

A San Joaquin County Sheriff's deputy walks back to his car after responding to a call to Mary Graham Children's Shelter April 6, 2017 in French Camp, Calif. A new bill would limit arrests at foster children's ... more

Photo: Leah Millis / The Chronicle 2017

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The girl’s mother holds the teen’s favorite dress. She says her daughter sang to herself to keep her spirits up while she was incarcerated because child welfare workers couldn’t place her.

The girl’s mother holds the teen’s favorite dress. She says her daughter sang to herself to keep her spirits up while she was incarcerated because child welfare workers couldn’t place her.

Photo: Jessica Christian, The Chronicle

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Stuffed animals sit in the bedroom of a 14-year-old girl, who formerly resided at Mary Graham Children’s shelter, at her mother's home in San Joaquin County.

Stuffed animals sit in the bedroom of a 14-year-old girl, who formerly resided at Mary Graham Children’s shelter, at her mother's home in San Joaquin County.

Photo: Jessica Christian, The Chronicle

Girl’s undue jailing exemplifies plight of foster youth in custody

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A 14-year-old foster youth arrested at a long-troubled San Joaquin County children’s shelter was held in jail for weeks after a court had approved her release, simply because child welfare officials were unable to find a suitable home for her.

The girl’s incarceration ended abruptly Wednesday, hours after a reporter contacted officials at the local juvenile hall to inquire about her case. But the problem of youths being locked up because they have no parents to retrieve them and no placement in the foster care system underscores the serious consequences often facing children arrested at state-licensed facilities.

A Chronicle investigation last year documented thousands of calls for runaway foster youth and hundreds of questionable arrests at shelters for abused and neglected children in California. In response, a state lawmaker introduced a bill Thursday that would declare a three-year moratorium on arrests for minor misbehavior at shelters and group homes — settings that can become gateways to the criminal justice system.

The young teen in San Joaquin County would not have been protected under the proposed law. She was arrested at the Mary Graham Children’s Shelter outside of Stockton on Jan. 2 after she ran away with several other residents and was charged with committing property crimes at an adjacent hospital.

Still, attorneys who reviewed the case said, she appeared to be releasable to Child Protective Services just days after being booked into juvenile hall. They also said they believed there was no legal basis for keeping her detained for weeks after she pleaded guilty to the crimes.

The only reason she remained jailed, they said, was that the county failed to find a foster care placement — a situation contrary to the intent of a 2014 law that specifies foster youth cannot be held in juvenile hall just because child welfare agencies cannot find appropriate housing.

For a young person, the experience of being arrested, handcuffed and jailed can have lifelong consequences, legal experts say, particularly for youth who have been pulled from their families and whose lives are in limbo at a temporary shelter facility.

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Foster youth and child welfare experts take us on an emotional journey as they describe the effects of going from a shelter and group home for abused and neglected children to a jail cell.

Media: San Francisco Chronicle

“Courts are reluctant to want to release a kid when they know the kid doesn’t have a parent, which disproportionately affects the kid, because they’re being held because they’re in foster care — not because they did something serious,” Carolyn Levenberg, a San Diego attorney with lengthy experience representing children and parents in the foster care system, said in an interview last year. “I’ve seen kids do weeks in custody for things that are ‘cite and release’ usually, like a petty theft — it’s a whole culture of thinking these kids are more of a risk than they are.”

The Chronicle is not naming the San Joaquin County teen because she is a minor and probation officials and prosecutors declined to discuss details of the case, citing confidentiality laws. Reporters were unable to speak directly to the girl.

The questionable detention occurred despite ongoing scrutiny of the local child welfare system. In August, a division of the California Department of Social Services found that San Joaquin County was not properly caring for its foster youth and gave officials one month to propose reforms to an array of deficiencies, from the failure of social workers to manage cases to poor monitoring of mental health and educational needs.

In response, county child welfare leaders sent a letter to state officials in September saying Mary Graham was providing more mental health services and had taken steps to reduce the number of runaways from the shelter, among other changes.

Michael Miller, director of the San Joaquin County Human Services Agency, which oversees the Mary Graham shelter, could not be reached for comment. In the past, he has said the county is working to identify and support families “willing and able to accept our more challenging foster youth.”

The Chronicle was able to confirm that the teenager was sent to Mary Graham in October after authorities determined it was in her best interest to be removed from her home. During her months-long stay at the shelter — which is intended only for short-term emergency placements — the girl repeatedly ran away from the unlocked facility, her mother said.

On Jan. 2, the teenager, who had no previous criminal record, left Mary Graham with a group of youngsters who broke into an empty building at a nearby hospital, vandalized it and stole items. She was arrested and charged with five felony property crimes.

“If her needs were met in the shelter, she might not have run away,” said Tracey Feild, director of child welfare at the national Annie E. Casey Foundation, which advocates for at-risk children and families. “And if she hadn’t run away, she wouldn’t have committed the crimes.”

The Chronicle’s investigation documented thousands of reported runaways from the 60-bed facility in 2015 and 2016. In recent months, children have been arrested after running away from Mary Graham and allegedly committing crimes at the adjacent hospital, including one case where children broke into a shed and hot-wired golf carts.

After being detained for weeks, on Jan. 22 the San Joaquin County teenager pleaded guilty to the five charges she faced and agreed to be placed on a form of probation. Such a deal typically results in release, experts said, but the girl continued to be held until Feb. 14, as social workers searched for a foster care placement.

While locked up, the teenager would sing to herself to keep her spirits up, her mother said, and she constantly begged her social worker and juvenile hall employees to explain why she was not being freed.

“The fact she stayed in because CPS couldn’t place her flies in the face of recent reforms intended to make sure that kids in the dependency system aren’t further criminalized,” said Ji Seon Song, a fellow and lecturer at Stanford Law School who focuses on juvenile and criminal justice.

The case is similar to one handled by Levenberg in 2015, which involved two 13-year-old girls who were arrested and jailed for tipping over a vending machine and snatching some chips at San Diego County’s foster care shelter, the A.B. and Jessie Polinsky Children’s Center.

Fostering Failure

When prosecutors charged the girls with two misdemeanors, petty theft and vandalism, Levenberg’s office filed a habeas corpus petition to the Fourth District Court of Appeal to secure their release. The appeals court ordered the two girls immediately freed, determining that the facts “strongly suggest” they were “detained in Juvenile Hall based on the facts they are dependents of the court and their social workers have been unable to find placements for them.”

There has been little research on the predicament faced by foster youth who remain jailed because suitable placements cannot be found. A 2001 Vera Institute of Justice report on 4,653 youth found that children in the foster care system were detained more often than their peers, even though their crimes were no more severe.

Tim Ross, a co-author of the report, acknowledged that it can be hard for agencies to find housing for some troubled teens, but said the traumatic experience of being jailed cannot be undone.

“Being held against your will and not being able to move freely is something that can impact kids for a long time,” said Ross, now the managing partner of Action Research Partners, a child welfare and research policy think tank in New York. “These are kids who are losing their liberty, not because of what they did, but because of a systemic failure.”